Howard Johnson

restaurateurBorn: 1896Birthplace: Boston, Mass.

As post-War America began taking to the open road, Howard Johnson was there offering road-side meals and ice-cream that catered to the family on the move. He began with a single drugstore soda fountain in Wallaston, Massachusetts for which he developed 28 flavors of ice-cream, then franchised both his name and his products for use up and down the East Coast. When he retired in 1959, the company was the largest private food distributor in the country.